So the last race in CA looks pretty certain to go to the D's--the most recent updates for all four counties in the district ended up favoring Cox, the Democratic candidate, who now has a lead of a little more than 500 votes.

Of note, Paul Ryan says that he doesn't understand what's going on in California. How can you have an electoral system that doesn't arbitrarily discard votes from "those people"? I think he's a strong challenger to Poliquin as Whiner-in-Chief of 2018.

Of note, Paul Ryan says that he doesn't understand what's going on in California. How can you have an electoral system that doesn't arbitrarily discard votes from "those people"? I think he's a strong challenger to Poliquin as Whiner-in-Chief of 2018.

"How can you have a voting system that allows as many eligible voters to participate as possible and then counts ALL of their votes? It's madness! Madness I tell you!" --Whinin' Ryan

" 'Individual conscience' means that women only get contraceptives if their employers, their physicians, their pharmacists, their husbands and/or fathers, pastors, and possibly their mayors, Governors, State Secretaries of Health, Congressmen, Senators, and President all agree that in that particular case they're justifiable." --D.C. Sessions

"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."

"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer

""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer

Newly elected Rep. Ross Spano (R-FL) admitted Friday that loans he made to his campaign committee “may have been in violation of the Federal Campaign Finance Act.”

In a letter dated Friday to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a lawyer for Spano listed $180,000 in personal loans Spano took out during his congressional campaign from two people, who Spano claims are longtime friends, between June and October.

Around the same, Spano personally lent his campaign nearly the same amount from “personal funds.”

While candidates for federal office may donate or loan an unlimited amount of their own personal wealth to their campaigns, according to federal election law: “If any person, including a relative or friend of the candidate, gives or loans the candidate money ‘for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office,’ the funds are not considered personal funds of the candidate even if they are given to the candidate directly.”

Loans given for the purpose of influencing a federal election, according to the law, are subject to standard $2,700-per-election limits.

Spano and his lawyer have painted the episode as one big oversight.

“When Representative-Elect Spano took out the personal four loans and when Representative-Elect Spano made the four loans to the Committee, he believed he was acting in full compliance with the law – as did Mr. Carreno and Ms. Hunt when they entered the promissory notes with him – based on the consultations they had at the time,” his lawyer wrote to the FEC. (Read the full letter below.)

But Spano’s defeated Democratic opponent, Kristen Carlson, has referred the matter to the FBI for investigation, and according to the Tampa Bay Times, Spano’s Republican primary opponent, a former state representative, “has also accused him of breaking the law.”

“I don’t know if that amount of money would have affected the outcome of my race,” Carlson told the Times, “but I really do believe it affected the primary race.”

And the Tampa Bay Times reported during the campaign itself that Spano was months overdue in filing a personal financial disclosure form that ultimately revealed the personal loans he took from the two friends.

Spano also initially lowballed the amount of one loan. A footnote in his letter to the FEC blames the mistake — which listed a loan of $75,000 erroneously as $35,000 — on a “draftsman’s error.” A Spano spokesperson told the Times Saturday that he had not yet received “any letter of inquiry” from the FEC, the paper reported.

" 'Individual conscience' means that women only get contraceptives if their employers, their physicians, their pharmacists, their husbands and/or fathers, pastors, and possibly their mayors, Governors, State Secretaries of Health, Congressmen, Senators, and President all agree that in that particular case they're justifiable." --D.C. Sessions

"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."

"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer

""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer

A federal judge rejected a lawsuit Thursday by a Republican incumbent from Maine who lost the nation’s first congressional election held under a candidate-ranking system.

Democrat Jared Golden defeated Bruce Poliquin in the November contest, which allowed voters to rank up to four candidates. Poliquin won the most votes but failed to get a majority. Votes cast for two trailing candidates were then reassigned to voters’ second choices, which swung the election to Golden.

Poliquin then filed a lawsuit alleging that the new balloting system, also called ranked choice, violated the U.S. Constitution.

He asked Judge Lance Walker either to declare him the winner or order a second election for the 2nd Congressional District. But Walker, a recent appointee by Republican President Donald Trump, did neither.

The judge said he failed to see how Maine’s candidate-ranking system undercut voters’ First Amendment rights “in any fashion.” He said the system was “motivated by a desire to enable third-party and non-party candidates to participate in the political process, and to enable their supporters to express support, without producing the spoiler effect.”

The new method of voting “actually encourages First Amendment expression, without discriminating against any voter based on viewpoint, faction or other invalid criteria,” said Walker, a judge with U.S. District Court in Bangor.

Meanwhile, the state is about halfway through a recount in Augusta, the state capital, of the 2nd Congressional District election. Poliquin requested the recount.

After the judge’s ruling was announced Thursday, Poliquin said he remained concerned about some Maine voters expressing confusion with the voting system. He defended Maine’s old system as a “common sense, one-person, one-vote process.”

" 'Individual conscience' means that women only get contraceptives if their employers, their physicians, their pharmacists, their husbands and/or fathers, pastors, and possibly their mayors, Governors, State Secretaries of Health, Congressmen, Senators, and President all agree that in that particular case they're justifiable." --D.C. Sessions

"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."

"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer

""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer

North Carolina’s governor said Tuesday he’s vetoing legislation that directs fully rerun elections if fraud is found in a disputed U.S. House race, saying the hastily approved bill also adds new cover for lobbyists and people who violate campaign finance laws.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said he’ll sign the legislation if state lawmakers remove the section that includes details like requiring that state elections officials refer apparent campaign finance crimes to a separate commission for a confidential review on whether prosecutors are notified. The section raising Cooper’s ire also requires that new rules regulating lobbying to go through a time-consuming review process.

“This bill makes it harder to root out corruption in elections and campaign finance,” Cooper said at a news conference. “These new provisions can shield wrongdoers by adding broad confidentiality requirements, limiting those who can file a complaint, handcuffing investigators on how far back they can look and by requiring a re-investigation by a second committee before evidence can be turned over to prosecutors.”

The legislation also reworks who oversees the enforcement of state elections and ethics laws and would require new primary elections if last month’s results in the 9th Congressional District race are abandoned.

" 'Individual conscience' means that women only get contraceptives if their employers, their physicians, their pharmacists, their husbands and/or fathers, pastors, and possibly their mayors, Governors, State Secretaries of Health, Congressmen, Senators, and President all agree that in that particular case they're justifiable." --D.C. Sessions

"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."

"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer

""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."-- Winston Churchill"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices" Voltaire

The Republican House candidate whose unofficial victory in a North Carolina race has been called into a question with an ongoing election fraud investigation won’t be seated with the new Congress next week, incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) confirmed to Charlotte’s WSOC-TV Friday.

State election officials this month refused to certify the election of North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, where Republican Mark Harris had an unofficial lead of 900-some votes over Democrat Dan McCready. Irregularities in the absentee vote tallies in the district prompted an investigation into an absentee ballot scheme run by a local operative linked to Harris’ campaign. The state elections board will hold a hearing on the investigation’s findings next month.

" 'Individual conscience' means that women only get contraceptives if their employers, their physicians, their pharmacists, their husbands and/or fathers, pastors, and possibly their mayors, Governors, State Secretaries of Health, Congressmen, Senators, and President all agree that in that particular case they're justifiable." --D.C. Sessions

"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."

"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer

""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer

Long before accusations of absentee ballot fraud in a small North Carolina county cast doubt on the results of a heated 2018 congressional race, a state elections investigator spent weeks probing whether the man at the center of the current scandal was among a group buying votes.

That 2010 investigation was one of at least a half dozen instances over the last nine years that prosecutors and elections officials received complaints of serious elections irregularities in Bladen County, a rural locale of 35,000 people that has long had a statewide reputation for political chicanery by both Republicans and Democrats. The state’s ongoing criminal investigation into 2018 voting irregularities has focused on Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr., a local political operative and convicted felon.

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."-- Winston Churchill"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices" Voltaire

Gee, the "winner" of an election riddled with Republican fraud can't get certified. Is this really the kind of nation we want to live in? [/snark]

Quote

A North Carolina judge says there aren’t grounds to step in and declare victory for the Republican in the country’s last undecided congressional race amid an investigation into whether his lead was boosted by illegal vote-collection tactics.

" 'Individual conscience' means that women only get contraceptives if their employers, their physicians, their pharmacists, their husbands and/or fathers, pastors, and possibly their mayors, Governors, State Secretaries of Health, Congressmen, Senators, and President all agree that in that particular case they're justifiable." --D.C. Sessions

"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."

"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer

""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer

Democrats’ gains in state legislatures didn’t end with last November’s elections.

Over the past two months, as lawmakers were sworn in and this year’s statehouse sessions got underway, Republicans in California, Kansas and New Jersey switched their party affiliations to become Democrats.

They cited various reasons, but the party-switchers have one thing in common: They say the GOP under President Donald Trump has become too extreme.

“The Republican Party, for all of its statements of having a big tent, continues to limit the tent,” said Kansas state Sen. Barbara Bollier, of Mission Hills, one of the switchers. “Those of us who were moderates are clearly not welcome.”

Bollier was one of four moderate Republicans from the Kansas City suburbs to switch parties.

The latest party-flip came this week in New Jersey. Republican state Sen. Dawn Marie Addiego, who represented a suburban Philadelphia district in southern New Jersey for nearly a decade, left the GOP, the minority party in both houses of the Legislature.

She cited the desire to “be a part of the discussion” in the Democratic majority but also hinted that the national Republican Party is no longer recognizable.

“My core values that originally drew me to the Republican Party have not changed, but the party which once echoed the vision of Ronald Reagan no longer exists,” she said in a statement announcing the change.

Her announcement came just days after California Assemblyman Brian Maienschein, who represents San Diego, left the GOP. He said he differs with his former party on immigration, health care, gun control, abortion and gay rights.

The defections come after the Democratic Party won control of the U.S. House in the midterm elections and gained seats in 62 of the 99 state legislative chambers, according to data provided by the National Conference of State Legislatures (Nebraska is the only state with a single legislative chamber).

They also come at a time when the president’s approval ratings are dipping.

“This is largely a product of the Trump phenomenon,” said Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “President Trump has blown the lid off of this party. It starts to look like a personality cult.”

" 'Individual conscience' means that women only get contraceptives if their employers, their physicians, their pharmacists, their husbands and/or fathers, pastors, and possibly their mayors, Governors, State Secretaries of Health, Congressmen, Senators, and President all agree that in that particular case they're justifiable." --D.C. Sessions

"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."

"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer

""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer

“President Trump has blown the lid off of this party. It starts to look like a personality cult.”

STARTS TO??? It's behaving more like Jonestown or Heaven's Gate. Maybe the Dumpster Space Force is to look for that spacecraft that's trailing behind Hale-Bopp. If their induction ceremony involves apple sauce and vodka, we know we're in trouble.

"All glory to the HypnoTrump, or else..."

"It all makes sense when you remind yourself that the GOP is no longer a political party but turned into an organized crime family"

"I hope to live long enough that the name Trump is reviled as much as the name Hitler or Stalin"

Gov. Greg Abbott has quietly been stocking Texas courts with Republican judges freshly rejected by voters, employing one of the strongest powers of his office to stem the erosion of the GOP’s decades-long dominance in the state.

In the three months since the worst election night for Texas Republicans in a generation, four of Abbott’s last six judicial appointments to fill key court vacancies have been former Republican judges who lost their 2018 races. One was elevated to the Texas Supreme Court just weeks after being voted out of a lower court in Houston.

Texas is among a handful of states that hold partisan elections of judges from lower-level district courts all the way through the highest appeals courts. The ability to fill vacancies is one of the strongest tools of the governor’s office.

Abbott’s recent appointments have stoked criticism from some Democrats that Abbott is thumbing his nose at voters. They’ve also questioned why Texas Republicans are sounding sudden alarms about partisan waves threatening judicial integrity. That includes Abbott, himself a former judge, who in February tweeted that the makeup of courts shouldn’t be left “to the political winds of the day.”

Four days later, Abbott appointed Brett Busby to fill a state Supreme Court vacancy. The former attorney for Christian legal groups and member of the conservative Federalist Society had just lost his re-election bid to a Houston appeals court.

“The people have said they don’t want these judges,” said former Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Larry Meyers, who served 20 years on the bench as a Republican, then switched parties and lost in 2016.

Democrats in November flipped majorities on four influential appeals courts with jurisdiction over some of the state’s largest metropolitan areas. Abbott’s office dismissed the election results as “immaterial” to the appointments and said the judges nominated were selected on the merits of their judicial record.

“The governor was elected statewide to make decisions on appointments. I’m honored that he chose me and I look forward to serving,” Busby said Thursday.

In some cases, Abbott appointed judges who have lost multiple elections to Democrats.

" 'Individual conscience' means that women only get contraceptives if their employers, their physicians, their pharmacists, their husbands and/or fathers, pastors, and possibly their mayors, Governors, State Secretaries of Health, Congressmen, Senators, and President all agree that in that particular case they're justifiable." --D.C. Sessions

"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."

"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer

""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."-- Winston Churchill"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices" Voltaire

The way a lot of catastrophes happen is that X doesn't occur because there are safeguards in place, therefore people assume X isn't a worry and they remove the safeguards. Then X happens.
— Nate Silver
"Robots aren't the problem. Capitalism is." -- Last words of Stephen Hawking.
These days, "libertarian" is just a euphemism for a Nazi who's afraid to commit.
"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." -- Heather Heyer
"I'd rather have my child, but by golly, if I gotta give her up, we're gonna make it count." -- Her mother
"Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events." -- some RINO

All right, kids- we're about ready to hear a "consequential" announcement. Puuullllease- it's SXSW- film. A really interesting documentary about Beto's run for senate, in TX. Um, and yeah- the news from it all is that he's showing up.

I will bet you 100 shiny pennies, he announces, on the biggest stage he could find.

We can argue his merits, later. But this will be one thing I can see live and in person, that will be really fun. Helicopters all over the neighborhood. It will be fun. Bummer, to the rest of the candidates that have been here. He takes the stage? He overtakes- at least for a moment.

See you on the flip side.

Every woman needs a blowtorch.
---Julia Child

--- On September 17, 1787, as Benjamin Franklin was leaving the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, at Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, a woman called out to him, saying, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”“A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.”

--- LFC, on Gorsuch ruling: "Awesome. A Christianist who swore an oath to uphold the laws of the nation and bore false witness when he did it"

Turns out my betting on Beto to announce was a fool's errand. Although the documentary seems fascinating, he's not in at this point.

Don't know that he will. Don't even know that he should.

Every woman needs a blowtorch.
---Julia Child

--- On September 17, 1787, as Benjamin Franklin was leaving the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, at Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, a woman called out to him, saying, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”“A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.”

--- LFC, on Gorsuch ruling: "Awesome. A Christianist who swore an oath to uphold the laws of the nation and bore false witness when he did it"